Silver halide color photographic light-sensitive materials are now used very widely since they have high sensitivity and offer excellent gradation and color reproducibility.
Improvements in equipment such as printers and automatic processing machines have permitted continuous processing and printing processes for a large amount of photographic light-sensitive material and have led to noticeable improvement in labo productivity. On the other hand, equipment size reduction and handling simplification have made it possible to carry out on-site processing in department stores, camera shops, etc. There have been increasing number of such mini-labos with the development of silver halide photographic light-sensitive materials and processing solutions which permit further shortening of processing time.
A shortcoming of the mini-labo is that processing conditions are more liable to changes in comparison with large apparatuses because the amount of processing solutions used is small and the photographic light-sensitive material processed undergoes wide quantitative fluctuation. Another shortcoming is that it remains impossible to automatically obtain a best print in all cases despite printer improvements such as optimization of printing-exposure using a scanner etc. Particularly, in the case of printing from a negative film obtained by picture taking under tungsten lighting or in the twilight, lowering of color reproduction quality always leads to yield reduction in ordinary printers based on the system wherein negative film density is measured to determine and control the amount of exposure for printing.
Use of a silver halide light-sensitive material having a high silver chloride content permits quick development, making it suitable for use in mini-labos; however, the material suffers faulty that print density shows wide fluctuation due to changes in negative film picture-taking conditions as stated above.
Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection No. 107531/1983 discloses that spectral sensitivity desirable for color reproduction is obtained by use of a silver halide light-sensitive material having a high silver chloride content in combination with a blue sensitizing dye. Japanese Patent Examined Publication No. 34534/1979 discloses that a supersensitizing effect is obtained and desirable spectral sensitivity is obtained by using blue sensitizing dyes of the present invention described later in combination. In any case, however, a problem of printing yield reduction of automatic printer is posed on color paper comprising a silver halide light-sensitive material having a high silver chloride content, and there have been no descriptions on improvement of the above problem by use of a combination of sensitizing dyes of the present invention or significant improvement in green color reproduction at the same time by use of a combination of a blue sensitive photographic emulsion and cyan coupler of the present invention.
There have been various improvements in the exposure control system for color printers with the aim of yield improvement. Examples of such attempts include the method wherein the filter for negative film densitometry is changed according to the color paper used and a scanner is used for color negative film densitometry for the purpose of performing optimal exposure control. However, even such printers remain incapable of providing a constantly high quality color print from every negative film and required separate condition setting according to the situation. Print quality stabilization on the color paper side does not contradict these printer improvements but supplements each other to accomplish the purpose.